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Latasha Ransome told a packed City Hall crowd that she has “lived in New Haven all my life. But I’ve never worked in New Haven.”
Ransome (at left) and others delivered a message at a Monday night forum: New Haven has plenty of workers, but too few full-time jobs with a steady income and benefits.
The forum, hosted by the Board of Alders Black and Hispanic Caucus, drew a full house, with people lining the aldermanic chamber’s walls and sitting on the floor.
Caucus Chair and Hill Alder Dolores Colon (pictured) called the lack of employment opportunity for black and Latino people a crisis because of the high number of unemployed and underemployed in those communities. She said despite President Obama touting the continued downward trend in unemployment nationally, and local studies that suggest jobs are to be found in urban centers like New Haven, minority communities are still struggling.
She said that more than 18 percent of black New Haveners are unemployed. For Latinos in New Haven the unemployment rate is more than 20 percent.
Those statistics offer a vivid contrast to other statistics showing jobs returning to the city — but higher-paying white-collar jobs.
“Think about it,” Colon said. “That’s nearly one in five people in our black and Hispanic communities. And this only represents the people who are ‘officially’ considered unemployed. There are many more who are underemployed, or have given up looking for work.”
Many of those precariously employed people in the city are people like Ransome, who lives in the Dixwell neighborhood. Over the last 10 years she has worked in property management as an account clerk, in collection services and as an administrative assistant. She lost her last job in 2013. With the help of New Haven Works, a job-placement agency the alders helped create with city and business leaders, she’s been working a temporary position with the New Haven Housing Authority for about two months.
“If I could work here I could take the bus to work and spend less time commuting,” she said.
Jose Soto (pictured) said having full-time, permanent work would mean that he and his family could move out of their cramped apartment. In 2009, he lost his job with a pharmaceutical company where he’d worked for 14 years when it decided to downsize. The job loss cost his family its house. With the help of New Haven Works he also is working a temporary position, his second, at Yale University. His wife also is in the custodial training program at Yale. “I’m hopeful that it will turn permanent,” he said of his temporary job. “With a secure job, maybe we can have a new home.”
New Haven Works Director Mary Reynolds said that the organization has 500 people in the city who are trained and ready to work, and over 1,000 people are on a waiting list to get into the program. The labor-affiliated activist group New Haven Rising, one of the event’s organizers, pointed out that there are 83,000 jobs in New Haven, but only 19,000 of those jobs are actually worked by people who live in New Haven. And of those working New Haveners, even fewer work a job that pays a living wage. And out of those, a very small proportion (about 2,000) also live in one of New Haven’s low income neighborhoods.
Erik Clemmons, president and CEO of Connecticut Center for Arts And Technology (ConnCAT), said the way to provide jobs for New Haven residents is to prioritize local hiring.
“There are a lot of people who are skilled and waiting to work,” he said. “But if you want people from New Haven to work you have to make sure the folks you hire are New Haven residents.” Clemmons also suggested that the city and local organizations have to do more to help people create their own businesses, which in turn creates jobs.
Caucus Vice Chair and Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn (pictured) urged the city’s employers to help the community turn the corner on unemployment and underemployment.“Now is the time to do something different,” she said. “That means hiring qualified New Haveners and committing to hire others who become qualified in the future.”
Colon said if there are 500 employers in the city who need employees, she hopes those employers have heard the message that there are hundreds of people in New Haven who are qualified and ready to work right now.
“Some are under threat of losing their homes and they’re trying to raise children,” she said. “This job crisis hurts families, and when families hurt the city suffers. There is talent out there and people are eager to work, and eager to work here in New Haven. They don’t want to go to Bridgeport or Wallingford. They want to work here.”